Up until recently, questions about the day after the Israel-Hamas War ends have included: Who will rule Gaza? Who will be responsible for rebuilding ruined, rubble-ridden areas? Who will feed the starving population? Who will provide employment? How many Gazan workers will be permitted to enter Israel? Who will educate the children of Gaza? And who will control the content of their textbooks?
Of course, there are many more questions. But now, some of the above questions, plus others, also refer to what happens in Israel the day after a permanent ceasefire between it and Iran becomes a reality.
Perhaps the Americans will help rebuild the Iranian economy as they did with Germany and Japan after the Second World War.
Israel’s economy, we have been led to believe, is sound. But it’s not sound enough to pay the real value of compensation to which tens of thousands of residents of destroyed or badly damaged buildings are entitled, nor for the cost of repairing or rebuilding public buildings or commercial centers.
Nor is there enough to pay for the rehabilitation of soldiers wounded and civilians injured in either war. And what about compensation for people who have lost their jobs because their places of employment closed down or because they were illegally dismissed by their employers who were opposed to the time spent away from the job while doing more than a fair share of reserve duty in the army?
For the time being, Israelis have demonstrated amazing stoicism, and survivors of missile crashes into their buildings – even after losing their most precious possessions – have taken their losses in their stride and are simply thankful for being alive and unscathed.
The fact that they are physically uninjured does not mean that they will not suffer some delayed trauma, and the treatment for this must also be included in a list of national priorities.
Impossible with mobilization, support of Diaspora Jewry
WHENEVER ISRAEL is complimented for the strides it has made in a 77-year period, people tend to overlook that very little of this would have been possible without the mobilization and support of Diaspora Jewry.
It started with coins placed in a Jewish National Fund Blue Box every Friday just before the lighting of Shabbat candles. Non-affluent people put in a coin, which could not buy much, if anything, but those coins multiplied around the world. Additionally, people were climbing higher on the economic ladder and donating meaningful sums of money to projects in the Holy Land.
Take a look at the walls of any public building in Israel and count the plaques bearing the names of donors who become even more generous when Israel is challenged by yet another existential threat.
Aside from individual donors who don’t necessarily belong to any “Friends” group of one institution or another, there is an umbrella group known as the Jewish Funders Network, an international community founded in 1990 by Sydney Shapiro and Jonathan Cohen.
The pair convened a meeting in Chicago, to which they invited 17 Jewish philanthropists. The next meeting, a year later, was attended by 59 funders. Today, membership is in the range of 3,000. The JFN has offices in Israel and New York, and its members meet to exchange information and learn from each other about meaningful causes.
The current president and CEO is Andres Spokoiny, an Argentinian Jewish activist who lives in New York and has his finger on the pulse of what is happening in Israel in real time.
In preparation for the day after, the Federation of Local Authorities in Israel should, in consultation with residents of each municipality, make a list of priorities requiring attention, and the government should also make a list in consultation with field workers from each ministry. Representatives of the federation and the government should then meet with JFN representatives to map out a plan of action.
In addition, property developers should put all unstarted projects on hold and start rebuilding all the damaged and destroyed buildings, partially as a gift to national rehabilitation. They can examine the total number of projects involved and divide responsibilities for restoration and reconstruction as fairly as possible.
Gov't should discuss advisability of continuing high-rise buildings in urban projects
FURTHERMORE, the government should discuss the advisability of continuing with ultra-high-rise buildings in urban renewal projects, as such buildings were the main targets of Iranian missiles.
A month-and-a-half-old baby and his five-year-old brother were rescued from a building in which their family lived on the 29th floor. The soldiers who rescued the two children and delivered them to their anxious parents walked with them in their arms down 29 flights of stairs. Search and rescue efforts in some other tall buildings had rescuers walking up and down even more flights of stairs.
Such buildings are definitely dangerous.
Something else that the government should discuss is legalizing unrecognized Bedouin villages and giving every family access to water and electricity.
It is imperative that every city, town, and village has public bomb shelters and that community and individual bomb shelters are part of the construction plan of every new residential project. It is untenable that such a vulnerable country has not made sure that every resident has instant access to a safe room or some other kind of shelter and that every public shelter has a ramp for the physically challenged.
Portable bomb shelters have been provided in some communities by Evangelical Christians, but they should not have to be doing the job of the government or city councils.
Inevitably, some urgent needs will be bypassed, and it is, therefore, essential that every municipality open a social media website on which residents and business people can report on things that need to be done, and such reports must be limited to a maximum of 50 words. Such platforms should be inspected daily by government, municipal, and JFN representatives in case there are urgent issues that need immediate attention but which somehow slipped under the radar.